


Presence

by CorvidFeathers



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers Age of Ultron
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief, Loss, Post-Canon, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can feel each and every one of the individuals in the Avengers’ base, can sense the shape of their emotions, their turmoils and joys.  She recognizes those who have become familiar to her over the past months, the aura of their presence familiar to her with a brush of her power.<br/>But none of that can fill the wrenching gaping absence that she wakes each morning to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presence

The building hums with thought.

                Wanda can feel it instinctively, muted presences moving through the unseen planes of her surroundings, emotions bubbling and shifting around dozens and dozens of mind, fragments of thoughts and images reaching her even without her reaching for it.  Apprehension.  Excitement.  Surprisingly little fear, even with all each person in the Avengers’ base of operations, the majority of them vanilla humans in one supporting job or another, was risking.  The blissful relief of their unexpected survival, of facing cataclysmic odds, is still hanging over the entire organization, she supposes.

                She had not realized how close she had been to feeling that same bliss until that moment, letting the currents of thought wash over her.  In the franticness of battle, she had thought of nothing but her expectation of impending death, and her own struggle for survival. 

                Wanda could have been so happy to have survived.

                She is happy, she thinks, as she turns the newest object of her fascination in her hands absentmindedly.  A brightly colored puzzle cube.  It had been sitting on the edge of one of the techies’ desks that morning, when she had been making her way back from the training rooms, and she had snatched it up.

                She is happy, in a way.  Those frantic, panicking moments of the initial stages of the fight in Sokovia… the quick, terse speech that Barton had given her, his unspoken offer of respect, of _kinship_ … It had shifted things inside of her that she was still puzzling out.  For almost as long as she can remember, it had been her and…  it had been a team of two against the world, orphaned and starving and so so _angry_.

                Now she has a… team.  A cause, again.

                For the first time in years, she has a room of her own, and clothing that isn’t stained and torn.  For the first time in years, she could walk through the door and _leave_ , if she chose, and though she cannot fool herself into thinking she would not be watched, she would be allowed to go. 

                For the first time in a long time, trust had been afforded her by someone who was not the other half of her soul.

 A flick of her fingers sends a silvery breath of crimson power into the air, and wraps it around the pilfered Rubik’s cube, turning it this way and that.  Old habits die hard, and she has been denied so much in her life that she has a bad habit of taking what she wants when the opportunity provides itself.   It was a flaw that she and her twin shared.  Had shared.

She can feel each and every one of the individuals in the Avengers’ base, can sense the shape of their emotions, their turmoils and joys.  She recognizes those who have become familiar to her over the past months, the aura of their presence familiar to her with a brush of her power.

But none of that can fill the wrenching gaping absence that she wakes each morning to.

When the man had approached them on those miserable streets, speaking of a way they could fight back finally, effectively, a way they could take the conflicts that raged through their wartorn country into their own hands, she had been the reluctant one.  She had trusted that which she could do with her own body, her own hands, her own mind.  It had been Pietro whose eyes had lit up, and eventually that had chased away all her resistance.  They never had been able to disagree for long; and they both had loved their country and their anger in the same degree.

It could be said that the process that had killed all of their fellows had broken them too.

Wanda remembers feeling broken, as the press of all those emotions, all those thoughts crowded in on her fragile mind, and the things around her had begun to move of their own violation, in accordance to the slightest change of her emotions.

                But with all of the pain the violent awakening she had been given had brought her, it had other qualities that had always redeemed it in her eyes.

                She and Pietro had always been close, even for twins.  They were not overly similar to each other, in either appearance or personality, but they had always… fit.   He had been the first person she had ever registered in her life, the first word she spoke, her closest childhood friend… and when that fateful evening burned away all of their childhood innocence from the inside out, they had only grown closer.  In those horrible hours spent in the shadow of Stark’s explosive, she had been his strength, and he hers.  In the years after, they had been each others’ reason for survival; as they struggled they had turned towards each other for the empathy and compassion that the rest of the world lacked.

                At times, they had felt so close that Wanda was sure the old cliché about the bond of twins extending to the ability to share thoughts was true.

When the Scepter awoke her, it was true.

Amidst the painful, maddening press of her newly-awakened senses, amidst the delirium of her untrained, unfocused power trying to track and control every aspect of her surroundings and striking out wildly, she had found Pietro’s presence.

It had felt just like the brush of her brother’s hand, like the pitched tone of his voice when it was raised to argue some point, like his crooked smile, like his voice saying her name.  It felt like he was beside her, even when he was enclosed in layers of steel and stone and kept from her.

From that moment onward, they had never been apart, not truly.  She could always reach out to that familiar consciousness, and they could speak without words.  It was nothing so elegant as she might have imagined telepathy; more the conveyance of thoughts and feelings, snippets of imagery, a much more moderate version of what she could do to the minds of enemies.

It was the greatest gift she had ever been given, and the only reason the both of them had survived the years of imprisonment without succumbing to misery or insanity.

She had felt acutely her brother’s pain in being confined, the mania of energy enclosed and trapped into performing the same actions again and again and again.  He had known how close to the brink of madness the press of the other people’s minds around her had brought her.  And like always, they had survived.

They always survived.

They _always_ survived.

She read something, a long time ago, in some half-forgotten book, of a Japanese folktale that said the souls of lovers who committed suicide together were reincarnated as twins.  She remembered laughing and sharing it with Pietro, who had laughed too, and said it explained the tenacity with which they clung to survival.  Privately, she had later thought it would explain the persistence with which they flirted with self-destruction.

                And now he is gone.  Sacrificed.

                He had died for the people they had always worked to protect; he had died in the cause of the man who had destroyed them. 

                And now she is of that cause herself, and she is _proud_. 

                As much as Wanda may want to wallow in the confusion of Pietro’s death, in anger at him for _abandoning_ her, she cannot.  They understood each other far too well, they were far too well connected for that.  Barton’s speech had been to her, but it had reached Pietro through her just as effectively.

                And in that last moment, before this emptiness had been torn into her perception of the world, she had caught one last thought from him; triumph.  And she had understood him perfectly, as she always did.

                With a flicker of power, she tears apart the Rubik’s cube, leaving the brightly-colored pieces to scatter the floor as she heads towards the training rooms again.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Avengers Age of Ultron today in the theater. I did not go in expecting to get so attached to the Maximoff twins, but it happened and now I want to write all of the things about this heartbreaking pair.  
> I am in no way well versed in Marvel, so if anyone spots any errors please point them out!  
> Thank you timeless-deduction for the inspiration for this <33


End file.
